Songwriting is a strange and mysterious thing. Some composers are all about the melody. Others concentrate first on the words and the message they want to communicate. Some spend hours painstakingly merging music and lyric into a perfectly complementary synthesis of thought and feeling.
And then there's Mick Jagger. Here's his story on how "Tumbling Dice" came into existence:
"It started out with a great riff from Keith. Later, I got the title in my head, 'call me the tumbling dice,' so I had the theme for it. I didn't know anything about dice playing but I knew lots of jargon used by dice players. I'd heard gamblers in casinos shouting it out. I asked my housekeeper if she played dice. She did and she told me these terms. That was the inspiration."
I'm not sure "inspiration" is the correct term to use. Maybe "closest thing available" is more accurate.
And he doesn't seem to be all that excited about developing the so-called theme. For the whole second half of the song, he apparently gave up on throwing in more dice-playing terminology and just repeated the title.
Over and over.
I mean, why bother with originality when you can lengthen the song by simply repeating the same thought with the same words?
It's like he totally ran out of ideas so he just kept saying the same thing...even using the same words.
He seems to have absolutely bailed on having the song comment more fully on contemporary relationships and chose instead to just yada-yada-yada his way into a slow fade.
What a hack.
Seriously.
I mean, as if...
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